Marked for Sam Bouwman
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad19 Jul 2038
A knee injury of the worst kind for Alan Łodożyński
99 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Cracovia lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The terraces19 Jul 2038
Supporters turn on the $38.8M sale of Haydn Murray-Holme
He is going to Galatasaray, the club has $38.8M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Squad19 Jul 2038
Dijon Kameri was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad19 Jul 2038
Beno Selan falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad19 Jul 2038
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Adam Zielinski is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Boardroom31 May 2038
They will talk about this season in this town for a long time. The trophy comes home with the squad, and the route is already agreed.
Squad31 May 2038
A fracture rules Nedved Owusu out for 58 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Cracovia will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad31 May 2038
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Cracovia will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Squad31 May 2038
Dijon Kameri was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad31 May 2038
Beno Selan falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Market31 May 2038
Every dressing room knows how to read a signing like this one. Sam Bouwman is not here to sit and wait indefinitely, and the man whose place he has been bought to take knows it better than anyone.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad11 May 2037
127 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Heracles lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad11 May 2037
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Heracles will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market11 May 2037
Isaiah Ahmed hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Heracles can pretend not to have heard.
Market11 May 2037
Only the photograph left for Sam Bouwman
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Sam Bouwman will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Heracles the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad11 May 2037
Jan Žambůrek in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Heracles this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad11 May 2037
Tim de Koning falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad13 Apr 2037
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Heracles will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad13 Apr 2037
A knee injury of the worst kind for Elvis Elendu
52 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Heracles lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market13 Apr 2037
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Heracles, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market13 Apr 2037
Only the photograph left for Sam Bouwman
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Sam Bouwman will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Heracles the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad13 Apr 2037
Jan Žambůrek in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Heracles this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad13 Apr 2037
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad16 Mar 2037
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Heracles will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Match14 Mar 2037
11 matches without a win for Heracles
The run now stands at 11, and the questions being asked around Heracles are no longer polite ones.
Squad16 Mar 2037
A knee injury of the worst kind for Elvis Elendu
80 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Heracles lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad16 Mar 2037
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 9 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Match14 Mar 2037
Stijn Bultman had done his part in building a 2-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and Utrecht were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
Player ratings16 Mar 2037
A brace, and Stijn Bultman takes the afternoon — 8.48
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Stijn Bultman provided it, and the 8.48 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Player ratings16 Mar 2037
Bryan Limbombe, 35, rolls back the years — 8.57
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.57 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Market16 Mar 2037
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Match14 Mar 2037
Heracles leaking at the back
6 matches, two or more conceded in every one of them. Sides that create as much as this can live with it for a while. Nobody lives with it forever.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad16 Feb 2037
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Heracles will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad16 Feb 2037
A knee injury of the worst kind for Elvis Elendu
108 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Heracles lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad16 Feb 2037
There were 9 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Market16 Feb 2037
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Match14 Feb 2037
7 matches without a win for Heracles
The run now stands at 7, and the questions being asked around Heracles are no longer polite ones.
Player ratings16 Feb 2037
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.53 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Market16 Feb 2037
Sam Bouwman has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Heracles they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad16 Feb 2037
Jan Žambůrek in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Heracles this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match14 Feb 2037
Beaten 1‑2, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad2 Feb 2037
There were 7 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Market2 Feb 2037
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Player ratings2 Feb 2037
At 39 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.30 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad2 Feb 2037
Olaf Gorter has been here 10 seasons
69 appearances across 10 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
Match31 Jan 2037
5 matches without a win for Heracles
The run now stands at 5, and the questions being asked around Heracles are no longer polite ones.
Squad2 Feb 2037
Jan Žambůrek was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad2 Feb 2037
Words at Heracles training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Djevencio van der Kust is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Match31 Jan 2037
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces12 Jan 2037
Anger at Heracles spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Market12 Jan 2037
Heracles say no — this time
The offer from PSV for Tim de Koning was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Squad12 Jan 2037
3 goals in one game. The first was taken well, the second was taken greedily, and by the third the crowd were simply waiting for him to get the ball.
Market12 Jan 2037
Roy Leicester has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Heracles they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Market12 Jan 2037
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad12 Jan 2037
Jan Žambůrek in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Heracles this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match10 Jan 2037
Zwolle left with the points after a 3‑5 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Match10 Jan 2037
Stijn Bultman among the goals in a wild afternoon
8 goals in one match, Stijn Bultman on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Heracles and Zwolle.
Squad12 Jan 2037
Jeff Reine-Adélaïde falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match22 Nov 2036
No end in sight to Heracles's wait for a win
10 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Heracles has to find a result from somewhere.
Boardroom24 Nov 2036
The scrutiny sharpens at Heracles
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Heracles is running low.
Player ratings24 Nov 2036
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.91 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Market24 Nov 2036
Sam Bouwman hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Heracles can pretend not to have heard.
Match22 Nov 2036
No clean sheets in sight for Heracles
6 games now with at least two against. The back line has been rearranged, the goalkeeper has been backed publicly, and the goals keep going in anyway.
Squad24 Nov 2036
Jan Žambůrek was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Match22 Nov 2036
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 6 goals between Heracles and Groningen, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
Squad24 Nov 2036
Words at Heracles training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jeff Reine-Adélaïde is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Match22 Nov 2036
2‑4 to Groningen, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces20 Oct 2036
Anger at Heracles spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Squad20 Oct 2036
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Market20 Oct 2036
Only the photograph left for Roy Leicester
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Roy Leicester will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Heracles the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Market20 Oct 2036
Sam Bouwman hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Heracles can pretend not to have heard.
Squad20 Oct 2036
Jan Žambůrek in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Heracles this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match18 Oct 2036
4 matches without a win for Heracles
The run now stands at 4, and the questions being asked around Heracles are no longer polite ones.
Squad20 Oct 2036
Tom Vlietstra falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad20 Oct 2036
Sil Blokhuis has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Heracles will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Match18 Oct 2036
1‑1, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.